The writer's secret 'high'
I was at a 60th birthday on the weekend when one of our friends, who rarely reads anything, but has read Books 1 and 2 in the Angel Caste series twice, and just finished Book 3 - Angel Bone, said that as he neared the end of Book 3, he wondered how I was going to pull everything together. He hadn't realised it was a series with two books to go, not a trilogy.
I laughingly admitted that I didn't know how I was going to pull it all together either, as I was a pantser. However, I assured him that it was all going to end fabulously and satisfyingly.
Even as the words left my lips, I wondered whether I was being arrogant, or worse, deluded, and that it might end up as a trainwreck, but dismissed the fear. Experience has taught me to trust what the unconscious throws up, and what the conscious 'writer's-mind' then has to deal with. The unconscious is the 'wild-child', the energy, the boundless spirit, but to make a story accessible to the reader (rather than leaving it as an indulgent, mental interlude for the writer) the conscious mind has to roll up its sleeves and impose coherence and order.
Of course, when you suddenly write something that you had no idea was coming, but more crucially, that you have no idea where it is going (taking the hi-jacked story with it), you have a choice called the delete button. It's not an option I've used but it's a nice little safety net if things go badly.
What I've found is, letting that hand-granade the unconscious has lobbed into your story do its work, is a moment of excitement that throws open the doors to new directions, and that being swept in these directions is euphoric. Yet the real high comes when you see the pattern emerge, when the random threads spinning in all directions curve, mesh, weave, create the story, knit the emotions, bring tears, laughter, heart-ache and wiser understanding. When the story comes together and works.
I laughingly admitted that I didn't know how I was going to pull it all together either, as I was a pantser. However, I assured him that it was all going to end fabulously and satisfyingly.
Even as the words left my lips, I wondered whether I was being arrogant, or worse, deluded, and that it might end up as a trainwreck, but dismissed the fear. Experience has taught me to trust what the unconscious throws up, and what the conscious 'writer's-mind' then has to deal with. The unconscious is the 'wild-child', the energy, the boundless spirit, but to make a story accessible to the reader (rather than leaving it as an indulgent, mental interlude for the writer) the conscious mind has to roll up its sleeves and impose coherence and order.
Of course, when you suddenly write something that you had no idea was coming, but more crucially, that you have no idea where it is going (taking the hi-jacked story with it), you have a choice called the delete button. It's not an option I've used but it's a nice little safety net if things go badly.
What I've found is, letting that hand-granade the unconscious has lobbed into your story do its work, is a moment of excitement that throws open the doors to new directions, and that being swept in these directions is euphoric. Yet the real high comes when you see the pattern emerge, when the random threads spinning in all directions curve, mesh, weave, create the story, knit the emotions, bring tears, laughter, heart-ache and wiser understanding. When the story comes together and works.
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